In A Hercules in the Cradle
Edling challenges [traditional views about the early American fiscal-military state] by demonstrating how the federal
government used the powers delegated to it by the 1789 Constitution to
build a state with enormous extractive powers. Instead of reading the
story of the American state backwards and comparing it to modern states,
or evaluating it in light of modern theories of the state, Edling reads
it forward comparing it to its contemporaries. Most fundamentally
Edling interrogates the objectives of the early American state, and its
ability to accomplish them. In other words, rather than asking whether
the early American fiscal-military state was “weak” or “strong”, he asks
whether it was effective.